On the subject
of oil men (Pictorial 76), CL Moore’s Paradise Street is set on a
planet (Loki) where the pioneering wild men are being pushed aside, or
incorporated into the ranchers and fruit-growers new-town settlements. The
ranch hands have the look of men who have no love for the land and work and
play hard, the type who are quite akin to rowdy oil men.
He hated the
cockroach and the discoloured curtains and this whole filthy, stinking town the
settlers had built upon his world, his clean, wild, lonely Loki. (page 529, Omnibus)
Moore writes
like a dream; there is a musical, kinetic quality to her descriptions of
malfrequented quarters with hardened spacers. When Morgan realights on Loki, he
is in a whole heap of trouble mighty quick, and by some Byzantine foul play,
finds himself atop a Harvester bull,
leading a herd of total destruction “with nightmare speed” into the settler
town.
The guy is a
gambler and, like KT Tunstall’s Invisible Empire, has in his mind’s eye
the “wild ranges and untrodden valleys” of virgin territory. Spacefaring in CL
Moore is almost like sailing through the mind’s eye, the state of mind of a
rover. The Earth is still floating through the cosmos of forgotten idols that
make up Man’s endless psyche.
One of the best
known tales is the medieval Jirel’s first sortie in Weird Tales
It’s all so
familiar I guess there’s little point recounting the flesh-whitening surrounds
of Jirel’s subterran ordeal. Reference is made to the improper geometry of her
descent, and there is a suspicion that the plastic geography she encounters is
made up of the physical and psyche together (se DH Lawrence quote on stars Pictorial
67).
There is also a
reference to “scaly hides” of those who presumably built the vortex tunnel down
which she slides. The cosmic emptiness at the core of the black idol is also
manifest. The idol has a strong physical power, but a psychic desert at its
core.
For all that
Jirel is something like 9th century medieval, if every age can be
said to have its own idol, ours is clearly not that of a Christian church, and
has something of the subterran darkness of Black God’s Kiss.
The reptilian
aspect of modern life – the surges of heat, cold-light of electronics that burns
into the brain – Pictorial 75 - what
of the cold emptiness at its core?
The sterility of
electronics is like the solar serpent, with the head of a man – Howard’s
man-serpent from The God in the Bowl. I know you can say Moore and
Howard were just writing fantasy, but why such soul-devouring fantasy as Black
God’s Kiss? Is there at the heart of modernity, in amongst our fleshy idols
of screen and political stage, a cosmic emptiness resembling the one Moore
observes in the subterran medieval forte of Jirel?
Apart from the
sterile emptiness (sterile meaning infertile), we live in a land of mirrors
(electronic reflections, copies), and mirrors are reputedly the artefacts of
sorcerers (HB20).
Every society
requires idols – often called icons in the medieval Christian tradition of
Byzantium or Greek orthodox
(hand painted
icon)
If they are not
manifestly moral, perhaps they may be the opposite?
A mirror
(reflection) because it is not physical can have no psychic emanation. What it
does have is words – words that emanate from talking-heads. What if, behind the
talking-heads of our masters is a sterile solar serpent – rather than the human
figure? This cold serpent – that is attracted to the cold-light of electronics
– replaces the moral force of the physical body that manifestly has a psyche.
The moral force of the body-in-action comes out strongly in
Jirel, the psychic luster that the steely red-hair emits, like the ancestral heroes
and heroines of Troy.
The modern era is curiously lacking in moral force, which
seems to have been replaced by the idea that money (or the $) has its own
luster. So the West sees no flaw in dealing with China’s vast market, despite
the Chinese Communist Party being the moral equivalent of a cold-blooded
reptilian robot.
The reptilian side to West and East maybe see eachother in
themselves. Even if the West is less obviously repellent, the psychic emptiness
at its core may echo that of the far East. The serpent underneath Black Gold
was serenaded in the seventies by Grace Slick
If in a way the oil men of South Texas had a roughness that
was a match for the wilderness-pioneers, our modern “masters” have a steel
smoothness of oil and (snake’s) tongue that already is sliding toward an
electric-green future, replacing the antiquated machineries of oil.
After all, whether we use fossil or atom for fuel, the steel
of electronics is what is plugged into by the heads of our masters.
It was only thus a Ganymedan could speak to an Earth-born
human.. It meant nothing. There are higher barriers than these between human
minds. (Promised Land, Omnibus
page 569)
Thus is another pioneer/settler story by CL Moore. Here the
distionction is much harder, and the human Fenton is siding with the Ganymedans
who have been bred to breathe the cold vapors of the Jovian moon.
The difference is not told by niceties of physique and
height but by the cold, implacable minds of the masters in the Unit, the
monstrous Torren octopusely connected to all he surveys. Like another of her
tales, Heir Apparent, the human mind that is connected to the machine loses
humanity. It’s not a physical thing but an emptiness of psyche.
They may retain the human figure, but to all intents the
body is the machine; the cold serpent of steel and electronics and neverending
surveillance screens (iphones?) Similarly, in the modern world when the head overreaches
the body, it becomes attached to octopoid machines. This happened recently in
the UK when Prince Andrew had the bad idea of speaking to the BBC’s Emily
Maitlis. The result of that was severe curtailing of his Royal duties. “Big
deal”, you may think, yet he merely made the mistake of being honest rather
than gurning to the cameras.
The real point is the Ganymedans of Promised Land
work the land with their bodies and don’t try to run it with their minds.
It seemed odd to watch them carrying hoes and garden baskets
in the snow, but the valley was much warmer below the mist.
Kristin came toward him, very tall, moving with a swift,
smooth ease that made every motion a pleasure to watch. She had warm yellow
hair braided in a crown across her head. Her eyes were very blue, and her skin
milk-white below the flush the cold had given it. (page 570)
Even on Ganymede, the forgotten idols are winging round the
mighty satellite. Such is destiny. An empire that is invisible to the mind playing
with its inward-looking toys that have no physical destiny, no psychic luster.
The image of DNA is yet another cold, serpentine illusion
playing tricks on the mind, when strength is in the body, working within the
seasonal cycles of life and death for the wider life of the soul in the
forgotten cosmos of the invisible empire.
Pictorial
65